Manuel Abrantes

YOU'RE NOT THERE TO MAKE THE WORLD ANY CLEANER

ABSTRACT Based on a review of contributions from labour sociology, gender studies and neighbouring areas, this article starts by describing the recent manners in which domestic work emerged as a topic of interest. Then, key difficulties underlying the subject in hand are discussed. It is argued that analysis should comprehend the link between the position of in-house services at the lower end of work value hierarchies and the political dynamics of knowledge societies, which requires attention to the role of mentality and ideology in mediating everyday interaction. Ethnic change, the singularity of private households as workplaces and the ambiguous bond between skill and emotional labour are central issues. Some particular perspectives of labour studies are bound to offer an improved lens in generating answers as to where the distribution of fatigue and indignity is actually being decided – and challenged.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind? External Voting and the Political Representation of Portuguese Emigrants

Over recent decades, emigrants have gained expanded voting rights on a global scale. Despite the normative debates about this issue, there are few empirical studies on why states decide to implement external voting and how electoral systems perform. This article seeks to fill this gap by looking at the Portuguese case. Our study suggests that a combination of political and socio-economic factors explains the implementation of external voting. On the other hand, the interests of political parties and the low level of civil society engagement are key to determining the failure of electoral reforms and the attempts to overcome the shortcomings of external voting.

Domiciliary care and migrant domestic workers: grasping the new institutional landscape

Purpose – This paper addresses the nexus of domiciliary care demand and vulnerable migrant women recruited as domestic workers, focusing on the role of two types of organizations operating at the meso-level: commercial companies and nongovernmental organizations. The purpose of this paper is to identify the ways in which these organizations seek to change the dynamics of paid domestic work and explore how they attempt to shape the voice of domestic workers and their employers. Design/methodology/approach – An actor-based approach is applied to the metropolitan area of Lisbon, a relevant setting for empirical research given local developments in the realms of care, employment, migration, and public policy. Qualitative case study techniques of data collection and analysis are adopted. The analysis is based on institutional records and open-ended interviews with managers of commercial companies and activists of nongovernmental organizations. Background contributions are drawn from interviews with domestic wo...

Contextual reasons for emigrants’ electoral participation in home country elections: the Portuguese case

ABSTRACT Although emigrants represent an increasing share of the electoral population in many democracies, not much is known about their participation in home country elections. With the purpose of contributing to fill such gap, this article develops a longitudinal and exploratory analysis of the contextual factors of emigrants’ participation in national elections in the case of Portugal (1976–2015), a country with one of the highest emigration rates of the EU today. It begins by presenting a longitudinal analysis of the electoral participation of Portuguese emigrants. Afterwards, the conditions underlying levels of participation are examined. Using aggregate data covering the main 15 destination countries, this study compares institutional, socio-economic and political contextual factors for voting. Findings indicate that the lack of political participation of emigrants is first demonstrated by the very low registration rates, although it varies according to the country, and that voting methods and socio-economic factors in the destination country are the most relevant to explain voting in home country elections.